Ruston has been recording and mixing tracks for artists such as The Donnas, Jars of Clay, Steel Panther, and Meatloaf for going on 20 years. Recently, while working with Anthrax on its forthcoming release, "Worship Music," he discovered Metric Halo's ChannelStrip plug-in, which aims to recreate the classic frequency and dynamics tools found on the analog consoles of yore. Together with Anthrax producer and guitarist Rob Caggiano, Ruston recorded and mixed the album.

"I heard about Metric Halo and specifically, ChannelStrip, from Rob and from an article I was reading about some mixers and albums I admire," said Ruston. "A lot of them commented about how helpful ChannelStrip was for drum tracks. For heavy metal, it's the drum tracks that need the most post-production processing. Twenty years ago, producers recorded a few stereo pairs of guitars, and the drums were able to sit powerfully in the mix without any conflict. These days, everyone gets that incredible crunchy guitar sound by layering massive numbers of tracks. But we still want powerful drums, and to make that happen, we have to be clever. It takes some pretty aggressive processing."

Ruston downloaded the ChannelStrip demo version. As fate would have it, he was just putting the final touches on Steel Panther's latest album at that time and he wasn't entirely satisfied with the snare sound he had achieved. "I brought ChannelStrip in on every single song and ran a parallel snare track through the 'deep snare' preset," he said. "When I blended it back in, the whole thing became way punchier. I was glad I discovered it in time! When the drummer heard it, he flipped out, it sounded so good."